‘Warhammer: The Old World’- Are We Getting A Big Rules Update & Beta Rules Soon?
Are new beta rules coming to Warhammer: The Old World? Let’s read the GW tea leaves.
Over a year in the Old World is going well. It’s got a thriving community and tons of events. People all around the world are enjoying the game. Yet it is not without it’s issues. The game, like pretty much every one out there, has balance issues, strange rules, and unclear interactions that lead to arguments. There is, as there always is, room for improvement in the ruleset. GW has done a good job of releasing a series of FAQ’s to help address things. Yet many people are hoping for a larger update to the rules to fix some major issues. In particular I think people want infantry to be better and that is going to require some core rule tweaks. Well, these people might be in luck, as it’s possible we’ll be getting a rules update soon. Lets take a look.
Beta Rules
There have been both calls and rumors of some kind of rules update going around for a bit now. I’ve mostly ignored them as there wasn’t anything to back them up. However recently people noticed that the rules packet for the upcoming April ToW GT at Warhammer World included the above highlighted section. It mentions you but not only use the FAQs and errata, but also beta rules. Now the game currently does not have any beta rules in it. This has lead people to speculate that we could be getting some as part of a rules update or test update. Given that The Old World GT is in April that would mean they would be coming pretty soon, before the April event. This has the potential to really change the game and has caused a decent amount of online discourse.
What Are Beta Rules?
Beta rules are basically test rules. GW has used these in the past, they were actually a big feature in 8th Edition 40k around 2018-2019, I even wrote about them at the time. These rules varied from potential major changes to the whole game, to targeted changes to some armies, to whole army books. They were put out into the wild to let players test them and give feedback and then eventually either discarded or adopted, often with changes, into the game.
Now while these 40K examples were optional rules, and you didn’t have to use them, in reality …everyone used them. Pretty much ever event used Beta rules and every casual player I knew used them. While they did tend to be improvements on the game, the constant changing of rules also lead to confusion and annoyed some people. Given the Warhammer World Rules packet, it does seems like they would be using them even if they are technically optional. Likely everyone else would follow suit.
Are Beta Rules A Good Idea?
Maybe! Look, if you think the game needs some big changes Beta rules are one of the best bets for that. The simple fact is we aren’t going to get a new edition of the game for sometime. Almost certainly not for at least two more years, but likely longer. The kind of changes people are asking for are also bigger than can really be handled in in a simple FAQ or even an errata. So we either need some kind of big official update or a big beta rules set that leads to a full update.
Beta rules aren’t a bad way to do this, they could let GW roll out some big changes without needing to put out a new book or anything. As they are optional they could let people who like the game now stick with that and others test out the new rules and give real feedback (something I think the core rules needed). If they want to make big changes it would be a good way of doing it.
The flip side, as I talked about with 40K beta rules back in the day, is not to do too much of it. Constant rules changes becomes wearing and a drag. This is extra true when you can’t even keep track of which changes are official and which are optional. It can even divide a community. While they can be good, you want to use them sparingly.
So, Are We Actually Getting Beta Rules?
So are beta rules actually coming? I have to say, likely not. At least I don’t see any real evidence of them right now. Yes people did find that passage referring to them in the April GT packet. But that same language is also in the packet for the Throne of Skulls taking place on February 22nd. If it meant much that would mean they’d need to put them out within the next week and players there would have less than a week to get used to the changes.
The language for beta rules can also be found in the packet for the 40K event taking place on the 15th. As far as I can see there are no current Beta rules for 40K either and again its unlikely given the time frame any will be out for this event. It’s possible they count the balance datasheets are Beta rules, but that’s not listed anywhere.
What’s more likely is that this is just standard language they are putting in all a lot of player packets. They’ve taken down the packets for older events so I can’t check all of them to see if the language was there. I don’t think it was in the early ToW event packages. So this language could be a recent update to them. It could also mean that there ARE in fact beta rules coming. But if they are using it widely it doesn’t mean that updates are coming for ToW.
I will note from what I could see, only 40K and ToW events used the beta language. I could not find it in AoS, Middle Earth, 30k or Warcry packets. So make of that what you will. At the end of the day beta rules are possible, even plausible, but I don’t see any really strong evidence for them coming soon.
Let us know if you’d like to see Beta rules in The Old World, down in the comments!
